Operation Impending Doom 2

I've always fancied myself a pretty good engineer.

Not necessarily the kind that will ever be recognized in any way for greatness, but one that is creative. I think I have the ability to come up with elegant creative ways to address a problem. Something you can't necessarily teach or become good at through study or even training.

I see the forest for the trees. I'm a system designer with the big picture in mind, other people can worry about the details.

Last week I got the warm fuzzy feeling that my boss also thinks I'm a pretty good engineer.

He came up to me and asked to talk privately with him. I initially got struck by that cold bucket of water of fear. Had I been on the internet too much? Did I do something wrong?

We sat down as I started to sweat a little.

"First," He said, "I want to ask you to sit in on interviewing candidates for a senior test engineering position."

Ahhh, fear washes away.

"I think you can ask some intelligent questions to any candidates that come in."

A little ego stroke once in a while feels good. His second agenda item in our little talk took me a bit more by surprise.

"What interest do you have in being a test engineer on this machine?"

I wasn't really ready for that. I kind of just started talking out load to him about how number one I don't want to travel all over the world for months on end to test this behemoth. (South Milwaukee doesn't really have any open pit mines in it.)

I kept blabbering a bit and finally made my way to the real reason I didn't want to test this machine. I'd be set up to fail. I know the time lines they are looking at, and I know what it takes to test a machine that isn't much bigger than a Ford F250, so this thing would be a monster task. This companies upper management does not understand that right now.

Plus, with opposite of dog taking over in 6 months who knows if that sort of position would be relevant in 6 months.

My boss seemed to respect what I said. Overall I think I turned down the proposition pretty gracefully.

I sat in on the interviews on two clowns they wanted to run test. Neither really impressed me. We are kind of looking for a Unicorn of an engineer though. Too much experience and breadth of knowledge required (I don't have enough on paper.)

I had never been on the other side of an interview table before. It was kind of surreal, especially asking the guy who was like 50 years old some tough questions and watching him dodge them.

I feel pretty good about what people think of me after 6 months of working here. It's just a shame this shadow of corporate evil is looming in the future. My only purpose at work now is to get this machine designed and built and working before our new corporate overlords take over.

What do we do now? … Now? Now, We Wait

I’m more at peace with this entire situation now. It doesn’t give me this dream like feeling when I’m confronted with the information. Just like everyone will die some day, Opposite of Dog will be our new corporate master some day in the future.

I’m glad some people are going to make some fast cash out of the deal. This lady will get a settlement I’m sure, and our boss cashed in right away. (Legal, but still kind of a shady move. Why didn't he sell last Friday? Oh right, he knew he'd make around $600,000 more if he waited the weekend.)

I’m comforted in looking at other companies Opposite of Dog has swallowed. They’ve kept their identity and colors, but just have a little owned by Opposite of Dog subscript on their website. We have more of their core product so our assimilation may be more yellow than the rest.

Here we are trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.

I’m still having a hard time grasping this reality.

When I was walked out of the Sandbox I expected to never set foot on Opposite of Dog property ever again.

Yesterday my wife was sick so I stayed home to watch the boys. I decided to put window plastic up on our drafty 60+ year old windows.

It’s not a job I’d normally be any good at. It takes too much patience and precision.

I paint with broad strokes.

I slowed down and let my mind come to terms with this new world I was thrust into. My head was clear as I put down the tape, put up the plastic, shrank it with the hair dryer and trimmed it was a razor.

By the time I had several done I felt less scrambled.

The irony of the situation isn’t lost on me.

I appreciate this sick sense of humor the universe has.

I left Peoria, and Peoria decided to follow me. I wanted freedom from the endless processes of the machine and the bosses bosses bosses boss, none of whom know a damn thing about what is going on, yet they will be back. They will come to this group of engineers who still exist in a corporate framework, but at the end of the day are accountable to each other more than their superiors. We design to make something great, not to fulfill metrics and be “Green” for gate reviews.

Maybe I can take part in how the transition happens. Maybe I can make my voice heard as the big fish swallows the little fish.

The Dreams in Which I'm Dying are the Best I've Ever Had

I'm having a hard time keeping this up.

I finished my paper review so I can get my raise. I did it in 2 hours. Makes sense though, it takes most engineers weeks to do their reviews. Writing papers on time got me my raise. It's what I can hang my hat on.

I also get to have a one on one with my bosses boss on my birthday. Hopefully I get a big pat on the back since that's the last day I'll just be an Engineer, and I'll be reborn as a Senior Engineer.

I fell asleep putting the kids to bed tonight thinking about dying. It was kind of funny, it was kind of depressing, but no fear.

Everything will be Alright

I’ve tried to convince myself of that. When I was younger I had overwhelming optimism which made it easy to think that during difficult times.

I’m more realistic now. Your life is bound to have a bad ending, until then you just need to tread water so you don’t drown.

I hope I don’t pass that on to my children. I’d like to teach them not to fear life, not to die 1,000 deaths worrying about their own.

My Grandma had a picture or sewn thing in a room of her house that said Why worry when you can pray. Maybe that’s my problem. I can’t put my fate in the hands of an unseen benevolence, but in doing so I put all the pressure on myself.

It’s why I don’t like flying. I’m not in control, relying on someone else’s talent and wisdom to keep me safe.

I’ve got to hand to the management at work. I didn’t think forced morale was possible, but they are making our performance rating for this year count to our merit increases next year. Super smart and clever way to prevent people from slacking this year with no possibility of getting a raise this year. Whoever came up with that one should get a big fat raise… next year of course.

I've Got Special Unique Specialness.

I've met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, "Why?"

Why did I cause so much pain?

Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness?

Can't I see that we're all manifestations of love?

I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got this all wrong.

We are not special.
We are not crap or trash either. We just are.
We just are, and what happens just happens.

And God says, "No, that's not right."

Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything.

I long for a phone call from any company in the Milwaukee or Madison area I've applied to. I'm a really good engineer. I swear it. Don't take all the negative things I say here seriously. It's just where I come to blow of some condensed water vapor. (See I didn't even call it steam. Steam isn't visible. I'm super smart.)

I have no desire to start working on another machine at work. I like (or in some cases can put up with) my D6 guys and don't want to deal with other people's quirks and expectations.

My lusted after shin guards are somewhere between here and St. Louis right now. They will be in my hot little hands by tomorrow, in time for rat hockey on Thursday, and I even already got my Federal tax return so they are paid for too. Not that I dropped all that money just on shin guards, I just allotted some for fun stuff, not just fixing and paying off stuff.

That's Your Theory?

It's amazing how things go downhill so fast. The desperate fight against the mass disorder and unraveling of the universe is impossible to hold off for any amount of time.

I wasn't even feeling that great, maybe kind of zen after that kid spared me.

Then a little bit of this, some of that and then it looks like you have an internal water leak in your wall. I think it's not quite that bad, but my spigot is all fucked up. The freeze cover didn't work. The plastic cover I had burst when it froze and water started leaking back into the wall. Not cool.

What a shitty freeze cover. I need to rebuild the internal shutoff and the outside spigot itself, as long as I haven't actually created a leak inside the wall due to freezing. Then I'd have to replace it all with a freeze proof silcock. He he he silcock.

I don't know. I really want some company to call me and tell me I can leave here. I'm don't feel like I have a purpose at work. I'm getting jerked around on this promotion. It's not doing it for me.

Ordered my lusted over shin guards. They came down $20 so I snapped them up. One bright point, although they will probably not have them in stock or some bullshit.

That's the way things are going. Higher and higher levels of entropy.

Blog Post a Day Till My Birthday

Nick started blogging again which kind of blew my fucking mind. I think it’s kind of like when you stop using that piece of exercise equipment you bought and it’s never used again. Anyway, he had this post about some website that supports people doing a post a day for a month.

I like the idea of doing a post a day for a month, but don’t like the idea of signing up for some site. So I’ll try it without the support of this site. It’s January 26th, and in a month I’ll be 29. I’ll try for a post a day till then.

We’ll see how it pans out.

I’ve become an orphan at work. I’m done with my beloved D6 until the end of the year (hopefully I won’t be here for that test anyway). So now I’m just going to be passed around from machine to machine to do whatever comes up. Unless some sweet pipelayer work does, then I get to run that because I’m the pipelayer guy.

I was wondering today who thinks about me (because I’m selfish, but that’s another post altogether and I don’t want to burn it here.)

Not necessarily the obvious people who think of me everyday like my wife and kids who are in direct contact with me. I hope they think of me often and fondly, but maybe like random people that I’ve only come into contact with briefly or maybe a long time ago.

Like how about the dudes I used to cut meat with at the grocery store. Do I ever cross their minds?

I can’t remember the dudes name right now, but just now I was listening to Buckcherry “For the Movies” and I thought of the meat department because this dude brought in their CD one day and got me into them. Damn my bad memory… Dan? I think that’s right. Dan was a middle aged dude who trained me how to clean the department and eventually worked his way up to cutting. I wonder what he’s up to. Does he ever wonder what I’m up to?

Probably not, I’m just the warm little center of my universe, no one else’s.

Unless you’re reading this of course, then you’re thinking of me. (Blushing and giggling like a little girl.)

The Long Hiatus

I haven’t written anything for a long time. Don’t really know why. I guess it speaks to twitter and facebook’s popularity. I’d rather just condense my thoughts into one sentence rather than a long drawn out story. Maybe this is the death of Pure Gonzo Engineering. More people look at my facebook status than this blog. Maybe I’ll try and be more in depth with my facebook status updates rather than: Lawryde is eatin’ lunch or Lawryde is sleepy or the other bullshit that I and other people ramble on about.

I have been working harder than I normally do. Not for anything more like I should be getting, but because we are understaffed. OMG, we got rid of all kinds of people and have a shit ton of work. This would be like if I crashed a dozer into the side of a building. Manager’s are allowed metaphoric crashes all the time with no repercussion. I’d be fired. I reported like 20 hours of overtime last month which is unheard of for me. I’m an 8 and out the gate type of guy. If I worked 20 hours of OT then my young single coworker worker like 100 hours of OT last month. Dude is here till like 7 or 10 at night all the time. I told him he needs to stop that shit. People will just start to expect it, and you won’t get anything in return.

I’ve begun to search for Gonzo Engineering work in Wisconsin, had a phone interview this Tuesday. I felt like a fucking idiot. When I was interviewing in college, when I got like 6 offers, I was a fucking professional interviewer. I knew what I was going to be asked, and I had stories for each of those questions. It was a think of beauty. Interviewers loved me. Last name Ever, first name Greatest. Now I’m all out of practice and my stories aren’t current. I stumble and repeat myself and have a hard time getting to the point, trailing of in incomplete sentences. Hopefully this one will be good practice for any future. Get me back in the game. I guess I’ll know if I was any good or not at this one depending on if I get an on site interview or not.

I’ve got this elitist hockey team I put together of(almost) all Opposite of Dog employees. We’re going to be the yellow team. (Ha ha ha get it, yellow… Opposite of Dog.) Can’t be really affiliated with the company in any way, wouldn’t want to sully the brand in any way. God knows I would, in the locker room and on the ice. The team seems like it will be OK, but there’s all this underlying anger towards Opposite of Dog and towards those that work at Opposite of Dog within the community. Hating the popular kid sort of thing, so we may have everyone step up their game to humiliate us.

Ahhh, this felt pretty good. Maybe we can do it again some time, more frequently than once a month. (ha ha, that’s funny right coming from a married man… that old stereotype of never getting laid once you’re married ha ha ha ha) (suck it lol, I type out my laughter, you can’t just box it up in three letters like that.)

I Make Good Babies

Photo from www.amandaephotography.com

Yes, he's adorable, but the longer you look at that pictures there's almost a sadness deep in his eyes. I don't know, it's a great picture.

I fell asleep at 7:30 last night. I felt wiped out so I just fell asleep with Oz. I remembered my dreams for the first time in a long time.

I was at Kroger, although it was the shopping center in Wisconsin Rapids that had Shopko and Copps, but my mind said it was Kroger. For whatever reason I needed bok choy and propane. I made the decision to steal the propane and buy the bok choy. I excecuted some elaborate plan to steal the propane and then strolled back into the store and bought the bok choy. Weird shit. Really simple and weird.

Second quarter results will be coming out soon. Time for another round of old fashioned layoffs... I speculate. Right sizing the organization as they call it. I feel pretty safe. I got an above average rating on my last review so I should be above, or in this case metaphorically below the lawnmower blade as it comes by.

I've got to head in and get an appointment scheduled to get my chest piece finished. I really should be getting all kinds of free tattoos. I've got people from where I work going to American Inkwell because I've recommended them, and it seems as though I can't go to a public place in the summer time without someone asking me where I get my work done. Ah summer, that time of year when most people show off their horrible, horrible tattoos that someone did for them in a basement. We went to SummerFest last weekend, and it was just a freakshow of bad tattoos. Kind of like Walmart is on any given day.

100 Little Curses (to all the people I love at work)

I have one more set of data to analyze and I don’t want to do it. Oh, for better times when I could just pawn it off on an intern.

I feel as though I’ve earned it somehow in identifying an issue that will cascade through almost the entire product line saving hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars.

I guess I’ll just have to revel in the fact that I’m that fucking awesome, and rake in my zero percent raise, and not get promoted, and be forced to have a new bosses boss who doesn’t know me or anything about hyd-O.

Negativity is an attempt to control. It’s hard not to be.

Good things tonight though, hockey tonight, sex tonight.

When this cold test is done I’m getting my chest piece finished. I’ve got a laundry list of tattoos I want to get done. Finish my chest, finish my left arm, an Oz tattoo, 9X4=38. That’s like 3 years worth of stuff.

I wonder if when I’m 30 if my desire to get tattooed will start to decrease?

You don't get to choose your nicknames

I don't know if I've told this story before, but I'll tell it even so.

My very first real job, the one I had 9 jobs ago, was working at a grocery store called County Market in Wis Rapids. I was hired on to bag groceries, but when I work a job, I rock that shit, and people take notice. I was promoted to work in the produce department, for an evil tyrant of a man by the name of Don Ruffi. I did the job, and was good at it, so they put me on Sunday mornings. I worked from 5 am to 1 pm. It was just me. I set up the department after busy ass Saturday, and broke down the load of produce that came in on like 3 huge pallets.

One Sunday morning, a transformer blew and we were without power for like 2 hours. It was pitch black in the cooler and the department so I couldn't do anything. The power came back on, and I still ended up getting the looking awesome before all the good people came in from church wanted to buy shit. Don stopped by to see how things were going. I told him the story of how the power went out and how I was able to get back and get a nice little department put together, all the fresh fruit and vegetables calling out to be bought. He glanced around, took a look at some fresh bunch carrots and proceeded to bitch me out about how they had dirt on them. My eyes glazed over as I struggled not to punch him. I nodded and he left. No "nice job" recovering form that loss of power, nope. Just a lecture on cleaning fresh bunch carrots.

One of the better moments of my life up to that point was telling him that I was quitting to go work at the Boys and Girls Club. He was singing a different tune then. He told me he'd try and work my schedule a bit or do something so I would stay. He knew he had a sweet deal with me. Cheap labor that worked hard. The shift of power at that moment was fucking delicious.

Anyway, that was like 12 or 13 years ago.

In an unrelated story, I am currently working on my machine in a giant freezer. It pretty much sucks. We start at 16 degrees Celsius and work our way down to magic -40. I have to run the machine at each step down because I'm the hydraulics dude.

Today we ran at 16, and that's not really cold, it's just for baseline data. I was activating the quick drop on the machine, which lets the blade free fall. It made a loud bam! on the floor of the freezer every time it was done. The dude that runs the cell was not expecting this. He decided to give me the nickname Bamm-Bamm after I came out of the cell. From then on during the day I was questioned and addressed by that name. Awesome... I guess he at least likes me so the next month should go smooth.

Like a Fool I am and I'll Always be.

I almost died yesterday. I was standing on the platform of a D8 track type tractor trying to open up the cab door. The engine enclosure door was sticking out blocking the cab door. I pushed the engine door in with my foot as I yanked on the cab door. The first attempt was unsuccessful, the second the cab door opened suddenly. I started to loose my balance falling backward. I caught myself before I fell backward down eight feet past the forged steel tracks onto the dirty concrete yard. Maybe I wouldn’t have died, but I would have been in some serious pain.

The shit never ends at work. Even when they say they’ve cut to the bone and they’re done. Turns out first and foremost they are liars. Perhaps more deceptive than flat out lying, but when someone says that when they lay you off, either rolling or indefinitely that they are going to subsidize up to half your salary, you think that means you’re going to get half your salary. Not quite. When you run the numbers an average single engineer making $75,000 will be making around 35% of his salary. One with a wife that doesn’t work with kids will be making about 45% of his salary. Whatever, the amount is what it is, but don’t be deliberately misleading.

Then talk of rolling layoffs when it was previously said they wouldn’t happen in R&D because they laid off 10%. Earlier today I was pretty convinced they would make us take them. Found out just recently they won’t be happening.

I really need to find a million idiots to give me a dollar. I can’t handle this shit. My mind is a delicate flower that can’t handle this emotional toll.

My tattoo has healed the best any of my tattoos ever have. After less than two weeks, it has no dry cracking areas, and no scabs. My guys at American Inkwell no longer recommend the wet method of healing a tattoo, but I think it’s way better than just letting it out to the air to heal. With the wet method you keep the tattoo covered in some sort of balm (I use Tat Wax) and saran wrap for the first three days, washing it every 3-4 hours keeping all the scab building stuff off of it.

My ten year high school reunion is coming up like in September. I’m not really sure how I feel about it. I only liked or was acknowledged by like a dozen or so people in high school, so if none of them show up I don’t really know what I’d do. So at that point what is the point? It kind of seems like a dick measuring contest.

Everyone rolls out their degrees (BS Mechanical Engineering University of Wisconsin Madison), and significant others (lovely intelligent caring wife), and awesome jobs (Hydraulic Test Engineer for Fortune 50 Company), and kids (Two highly intelligent superiorly advanced boys), and stuff (a house with two cars in the garage), and oh the places they’ve been (Cuba), and oh how wonderful they look (180 pounds of hockey toned muscle and tattoos).

I’ll have to see if any of my potato gun hommies will be attending. That may sway my decision.

You will be informed on Friday if you still have a job here.

For a while I thought Wall Street ran our company. We made stupid fucking decisions for short term gains. OK whatever, I can roll with stupid decisions.

So we announce a loss for the first time since '92. BUT if you take out the cost of restructuring the company we actually made a profit. Sales are only down like 22%. Really not that bad. Wall Street agreed, our stock went up the last two days.

Today we had a meeting letting us know R&D was thinning the ranks by 5-10%.

We'd been safe thus far.

Through the fear during the speech came the loathing.

Don't ever tell me your process for getting rid of people is "benevolent". Gods are benevolent, you're just people acting in your own self interest so you don't have to cut dividends.

Don't tell me not to worry because 90% of us are safe. I'll keep that philosophy in mind when I'm handed a 10 chamber gun with only one bullet in it and told to put it up to my head and pull the trigger.

Especially when you give us till Friday between 8 am and 2 pm to try and justify in our own minds why we won't be chopped. (My justification is that I'm working on the highest selling bulldozer in North America. That makes me valuable right? It should help me sleep tonight at least, and maybe tomorrow night.)

In a truly Orwellian moment during the speech an individual said that 9 X 4 was 38. No one really said anything. A few of us looked at each other. These people get to decide if we eat steak or the discounted ground beef that is 65% fat next month. Maybe that equation works out if it's in millions or billions, I've only got an engineering degree though so I may be wrong.

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?

or in this case 9*4=38

I'm scared.

And who do you think you are, Sir?

I forgot how frustrating and difficult my job can be. In the shit. Slangin' hydraulics. Breathing smoke.

I wanted to start early today, but you can't get a fucking thing done before 8:30 because of safety meetings and trying to hitch a ride to the test site in the fucking downpour.

I get my shit going, and I'm feeling pretty good. I need to get a pump adjusted. Turns out this pump is located in the belly of the beast and is nearly impossible to get a wrench on for my poor mechanic. Each adjustment takes about 30 min to determine how the pressures and fan speeds have changed. There are also two pressure settings that need to be altered and one affects the other. Turn one up and the other goes up also. Get one set and the other is fucked.

5 hours later and I think I've got it, and my software to interface with the machine goes crazy and I need to have IT fix it for me. They reinstall it because they have no idea what is going on with it either. By this time 1st shift is over. No more mechanic. I check my pressures and they aren't right. One day to set a pump, and I couldn't even get that done.

Tomorrow is another work day, however.

Swim lessons with the boy tonight were good though. His enjoyment and the warm water pool made the stress go down.

I'm a Slave and I am a Master

I paid off my credit card debt today. It took 5 years after getting out of college, but it’s gone. All that shit I bought in college is finally paid off. I’m unsubstantiated debt free (not entirely true, I think we still have a hundred or two on some clothing cards, Old Navy, etc.) Those are nothing though compared to the thousands that are gone now.

I’m always disappointed in these accomplishments that should fill me with something. Yeah, it’s gone, but now I just need to save more so I don’t fall into credit card debt at some point in the future.

I went to see Kalib on Saturday about my tattoo. When I walked in the door he asked me if I was going to beat him up. I laughed and told him I wanted to set up a hard date for him so he would have to finish a sketch for it. We settled on May second. He told me he had a good idea of what it was going to look like in his head, and that he just needed to draw it out. What he described sounded pretty sweet, and he talked about adding some mechanical gears and stuff in the wings which I thought was a cool addition. It should be bad ass. Although by nature chest tattoos are all bad ass.

When it was warm a few weeks ago, I was wearing short sleeves in the Walmart grocery shopping Sunday morning. Little kids in their Sunday best would give me stares and then ask their moms what was on my arms. Their Mom’s shushed them and dragged them in the opposite direction I was going.

My work rage is coming back. I've been able to put up with things because I'm at the sandbox. I can work out my anger in the dirt, and generally I can see the benefit behind stupid initiatives. This latest one takes the proverbial cake. Opposite of Dog is getting ride of ALL of it's company cell phones. That's millions of dollars a year that will be saved. OK, Jane and Johnny Jackass in the office don't need a company cell to get their jobs done effectively. They are right next to their phones 95% of the day. I on the other hand, am at my desk, in the shop, walking around the yard, driving 3 miles round trip to a test site, climbing up and down dirty slippery machines, navigating rough terrain on foot and by truck. We all NEED cell phones at the sandbox, for safety, and for a huge boost in productivity. Nope, stupid black and white initiative is going through.

Sounds pretty stupid, right? What on Earth could make it worse? Well, let’s put our imagination caps on. Pretend that, after all the rumors have flown and after manager after manager has pieced together bits of the story, you get this real gem of an email from a VP. Even better, pretend it’s full of grammatical errors. I’ll pretend it says something like this:

It is important to clarify the purpose of this change. The bottom line is that by upholding high standards of accountability and to managing the behaviors of it’s employees with regards to their cellular phone usage our company stands to save a significant sum of money.

Prior communications may have contained wording that did not accurately reflect the intent of this change. The intent is to have our employees utilized their own cellular phones to conduct company business. No employee will be required to share their personal information. However, I believe, and this has been reinforced by tens of employees, that the vast majority of company employees are willing to provide personal contact information in order to keep the high level of productivity that we have become accustomed to. The reality of the twenty first century is that cell phones and the ability to connect instantly and constantly are now necessary in our personal and professional lives. There will be no company provided cellular phones.

This change has the full support of the company executives and will allow us to get out of the business of managing cellular phones and will place employees in charge of upholding the before mentioned high standards of accountability and behavior changes. I am appreciative of the support I have received in implementing this change as I believe it to be consistent with the challenges our company faces in today’s economy. As managers, we should lead by example, as the company executives are doing, and only have personal cellular phones, not company provided ones.

Please send this message on as needed.

Vice President

As I’m imagining this letter, my imaginary brain starts to bleed from the sheer stupidity.

My Hockey Skill is Directly Proportional to the Length of My Hair

Last night was our first playoff game. We destroyed the team we played. I had a pretty tits goal, my second game in a row I’ve scored. We had an odd man rush. Our center carried it into the zone wide on the left side and I broke hard to the net. I got behind the defender and the center passed it to me. I put it in about mid net glove side. I was kind of shocked it even went in and didn’t really even celebrate. Our next game is Saturday, but there are a bunch of our guys who won’t be able to make it.

Opposite of Dog announced they are going to layoff another 2500 people, mostly production employees, almost 1000 in East P. I didn’t even know there were 1000 production employees in East P. Apparently no one is buying tractors. I’m guessing first quarter results are going to be ugly. I wouldn’t be all that shocked if we were in the red.

They’re dropping all these retarded edicts down on us to “save money”. “Shutdown your computer overnight, it uses as much electricity as a refrigerator.”

Here’s a little word problem related to that bit of wisdom.

Refrigerators, and my work laptop apparently, use 0.057 kw and electricity costs about $0.10 per kwh. I bill my time out at about $100/hr. It takes about 10 minutes to fire up my computer, log in, and start all the applications I need to use for the day. How much money will the company save if I turn my computer off each night? (Show your work)

0.057 kwh/h * 16 hours = 0.912 kwh per day

0.912 kwh * $0.10/kwh = $0.0912 per night shutdown

$100/hr / 60 min/hr = $1.67 per minute

10 min * $1.67 per minute = $16.70 in lost work

So the company loses $16.61 every day in lost efficiency by me shutting my computer down each day. Even if I leave the bastard on all weekend it only costs $0.27. I’m also pretty sure it’s not actually using as much electricity as a refrigerator.

I know, you’re screaming that I should just work 10 minutes of unpaid overtime to cover that startup time. I’m salaried and that is real money they pay to the electric company. Whatever, in principal it’s a stupid idea.

How about I only charge my cell phone and laptop at home and eat that cost to save the company money, only run on battery power at work. How about pay toilets, and bring your own toilet paper? Brilliant!

You're more of a 3

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1883614,00.html?cnn=yes

I can relate to this article. There are all kinds of rumors circling around, mandatory two weeks off without pay, new employee rating systems which assign a value to the company to you. The poor bastards with less than two years experience can only get as high as a 4, 5 being the lowest. I’m hoping I’d be about a 2. I’ve got 5 years, and I’m working on a machine which represents a significant chunk of our Tier 4 emissions credits to the EPA. (The EPA gives you credit based on the production volume and emissions level of the machines you produce. If you produce x% of “clean” machines, you can then produce more “dirty” machines without financial penalty.) Somehow seems like extortion, but I really can’t complain because emissions requirements drive our business and make for a bunch of jobs. If we didn’t have a critical emissions deadline to meet right now, Opposite of Dog would have gotten rid of way more people.

The shit just grinds on your nerves though. Always thinking there is some predator lurking in the tree line waiting to get you.

I liked the part in the article where it talked about how people who win the lottery and people that break their necks tend to be as happy as they were prior to the incident a year later. Just the other day I was fantasizing about winning the lottery and it kind of ruins the fantasy thinking I’d have no overall improvement in happiness. Life is a zero sum game. Any marked improvement is followed by something to knock you back in your place. Then you die, then the sun engulfs the Earth, then all the energy in the universe is used up (fucking entropy) and the lights turn off.

Self improvement is masturbation, but I’m trying anyway. I’ve gained the ability to gain weight since my 28^th birthday. I’m not sure it’s in a positive way, but I’m up to a solid 180. Perhaps it’s due to ingesting almost 1000 calories worth of “bold” party mix chex mix in one sitting while watching TV. Old habits are hard to break so I’m going to keep eating like I have my hummingbird metabolism. I’m also starting to do pushups and crunches in the morning. Hopefully that will fend off any gut and make me stronger for hockey. When it gets nice I may start to run in the morning. Maybe I’ll finally be able to get up to my fighting weight of 200.

12, 8, 73

Last Friday 50 contract workers got let go at the sandbox. Laborers, engineers, technicians, no field was spared.

It was a nice cap to President Obama visiting Opposite of Dog, and the Peoria area on Thursday. I’m working on my doctored photo of myself and the President. I like to fictitiously introduce all Presidents that stop by Opposite of Dog.

He was standing in front of the machine that I designed the cooling package, air intake, and exhaust system on. So if you look at the exhaust stack and pre-screener you can see what a kick ass engineer I am. The machine to his far left I’m doing the hydraulics development on. It was like I was right there with him in a far off, vicarious, unreal way.



I think if I get laid off I’ll become an appliance repairman. I fixed our like 25 year old dryer. One of the support rollers bushings had seized on the shaft it rotated on. That ripped the bushing off of the plastic hub and made the drum kind of bounce and make a horrible noise. It’s so quiet now you can’t even really tell when it’s done running.

Giggity

I'm not sure why this wasn't announced on Monday with the rest of the layoffs. I was reading elsewhere that we warned of posting a first quarter loss this year. That would suck.

I'm just going to keep on doing what I'm doing. I think what I'm working on represents 20% of the next emissions level credits we get through the EPA, so it needs to get done come loss or whatever, or the business is fucked.

I decided to go out and give the economy a goose this weekend and drop some g's on a 2008 Hyundai Entourage. It's a pretty sweet van. We got the DVD player and most of the cool extra shit you could get. No sunroof which kind of bums me out, but the deal was awesome. Since they were trying to get rid of the 2008's and this was the last one on my dealers lot and I've bought 2 vehicles from them already, they gave it to us for invoice and I got $4000 from the factory, and I got $1500 customer loyalty cash, and they gave us a decent amount on our Tucson. I ended up with only a bit higher monthly payment than I had with the Tucson.

I was testing out the wireless DVD headphones yesterday, and one pair's left ear didn't work so I have to have them get me a new one of those, other than that I'm digging it.

And for those of you who have been reading this blog for a while, yeah, I think you can comfortably have sex in it with the third row down.

Slipknot tomorrow. It's going to be crazy awesome.

No Slipknot video, because I saw Weezer live in Japan on Palladia and I can't get this song out of my head.